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Crouser was at his imperious best as he retained his title in
one of the morning session's three gold-medal events at the
Olympic stadium, breaking his own record three times in the
final -- only the third person to ever achieve the feat.
"I had solidified the win by the end so I got a little more
aggressive and chased that bigger throw and finally connected
with it," he said after finishing with a mark of 23.30 metres, a
whisker away from his June world record of 23.37.
Parchment delivered one of the biggest shocks in the Tokyo
athletics when he defeated world champion Grant Holloway in the
hurdles.
Holloway came into the race undefeated since August last year
and was the overwhelming favourite. But Parchment, 31, was not
intimidated and used a season-best time of 13.04 seconds to
propel him to victory, adding a gold medal to his London Olympic
bronze.
"The greatest feeling, the greatest feeling, I've worked so
hard. It's unbelievable that I caught this guy," Parchment said.
Pichardo won the men's triple jump, securing his country's fifth
Olympic gold medal of all time, while Fabrice Zango of Burkina
Faso made history by winning bronze, the country's first Olympic
medal.
"Burkina Faso is really happy. Everybody is happy. I think they
will throw a great party when I go back," Zango said.
In another shock, the U.S failed to make the men's 4x100 metres
relay final after a ragged run saw them finish sixth in their
semi-final, the latest in a dire run of performances in an event
they had dominated for decades.
The result prompted Carl Lewis, who helped the U.S. to win two
Olympic and three world sprint relay golds, to call the
performance an "embarrassment" in a tweet
https://twitter.com/Carl_Lewis/
status/1423114725802614785?s=20.
Canada, brought home by 200m champion Andre de Grasse, were
second, while Italy, helped by newly-crowned individual 100m
champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs, advanced to Friday's final with
a national record.
In the other semi-final, Jamaica led the way, ahead of Britain
and Japan. Germany and Ghana finished ahead of the Americans to
grab the two fastest losers' slots in the final.
Britain's Dina Asher-Smith recovered from her hamstring strain
and helped to secure a national record of 41.55 seconds and a
place in the women's 4x100 metres relay final as the fastest
qualifiers.
"There was never any doubt in my mind that I'd be lining up here
today because the relay's really important; we got a bronze
medal in Rio," she said.
The U.S. and Jamaica, will join them, with the latter likely to
gain strength with the introduction of Elaine Thompson-Herah and
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in Friday's final.
Defending Olympic champion Nafi Thiam seized control of the
heptathlon with the day's best performance in the javelin and
long jump, leaving the Belgian with just the final discipline of
the 800 metres to negotiate to claim victory.
Thiam has a 64-point lead over the Netherlands' Anouk Vetter,
heading into the seventh event later on Thursday.
In the qualifiers for Saturday's women's high jump final, Nicola
McDermott of Australia led the way, followed by Montenegro's
Marija Vukovic and Yaroslava Mahuchikh of Ukraine.
In the later events, a mouth-watering men's 400m final awaits
while the women pole vaulters will contend for medals and the
men have the 20km walk final.
(Reporting by Omar Mohammed, Amy Tennery, Sudipto Ganguly and
Mitch Phillips; editing by Clare Fallon)
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